OUR STRIKE THE FIGHT OF ALL UNIONS

talks to Ogilvi Lodge secretar!

'EVERYBODY has the right to work and the right to a decent standard of living—not luxuries as the capitalists are used to.

I'd like to take the money away from the rich just as they've stolen it from the working class and I wouldn't have any regrets.

'If that's communism and that's what the working class has got to do to survive, then I'm prepared to do it.' Ogilvie lodge secretary Evan Jones broke into a strike committee meeting to talk to "This strike is political. It's right up against the government and their pay policy. It's not the struggle of miners, it's the fight of every trade union in the country.

think the Tories are pre›ared for an all-out effort to deeat this strike. They are using the miners as a stepping stone in an attempt destroy this country's trade union movement. They want to break the miners so they can take the unions on piecemeal instead of altogether.

'The TUC has not been nearly firm enough. Our battle today is someone else's tomorrow. They should call a General Strike and push this government out. Jones and Scanlon [transport and engineering union chiefs] should give us much stronger support.

"The true facts about Tory policy have now come to light. Workers are beginning to realize that Tory policy is to lower their standard of living.

'In the last two years the drop in workers' standards of living has been staggering. The cost-of-living has gone up 13 per cent LEITER BREAK WITH OLD LEADERS' TRADITIONS and they expect us to accept 7-per-cent wage increase!

'I never agreed with the prices and incomes policy under the last Labour government. It's all very well Heath saying now we must all take 7-per-cent rises, but it depends what you're earning in the first place.

'Seven per cent of £30 is a lot more than 7 per cent of £12.

The Tories say they can't afford to give the boys an increase of f6, yet they can give the Royal family millions.

"The people today are fighting for the right to work and the right to live. But there's a difference between 1926 and today.

'The people of 1926 didn't know what it was like to live other than in poverty. But today, and particularly the younger element, people are not prepared to reduce themselves to the level of poverty their fathers knew.

•We're heading for a revoluCHCLIFFE The miners' irreconcilable w tion here, civil war. It's only a matter of time and tolerance. If they try to use troops in this strike there will be strong retaliation. People are very bitter.

'As far as the pits are concerned Heath has got to decide whether to pay the miner a living wage or line the pockets of the rich. He's got to decide whether he wants a coal industry at all.

'The miner has been too loyal for too long. We've been negotiating for shillings when other workers have quite rightly been asking for pounds. We've always put the country first.

'The lower-paid men are hardly existing-not living. Even when a man's working he has to get National Assistance.

The miner can't win this strike alone. But if a Labour government is elected after a General Strike, we don't want the same lot as before. The answer is a Labour government TO WIN this strike decisively we have to break with the old traditions of leadership which are bound up with the passive acceptance of an obsolete, legalized trade unionism.

If the NUM leaders, along with the TUC, were to call other unions out on strike with us, their members would respond. But they • know that mass action, translated into a General Strike, would lead to an open revolutionary struggle for political aims.

This they do not want, because they identify their interests and privileges with the retention of capitalism.

These leaders can no longer count on the loyalty of miners to railroad through their conditional wage settlement policies, which have meant annihilating hundreds of pits, and throwing nearly half a million miners on the scrap-heap.

The confrontation between the miners and the government shows up the clear class antagonisms, the deep divisions which exist between the working masses of wage earners and the capitalist class.

vider claims ih the restri: ive NEA following socialist policies.

standing feature Is an 'Nationalization outI'd nationalize all the industries and there should definitely be workers' control. The community at large should get the full benefits of nationalization. There should be of wealth, an equal distribution Commenting on the Young Socialists' Right-to-Work marches Mr Jones said he thought now was definitely the time to raise the call for the defence of basic rights, 'particularly of the trade unions and the right to strike.' Like most of the men around him who had spent the night picketing Llewelyn's open-cast level on Fochriw mountain, Mr Jones thought the miners' strike could be long and decisive.

He said: 'The men are much harder now after a week without pay than when the strike began. And some of the wives are more for the strike than the men.' policies of leaders who fail to recognize the class character of the struggle.

They are being dragged along by the mass will of the miners, and strive to suppress the class-consciousness of the rank and file, instead of giving it expres sion and strengthening its sense of class solidarity.

Desperate

Victor Feather and Joe Gormley are desperately seeking a solution which will subordinate the miners' wage claim to the 'national interest'.

In other words an intensified drive for more production and profit, with further drastic cutbacks in manpower, and a further decline in our living standards is posed. This would make the miners' union the slave of the capitalist machine, and mean a return to the mass poverty of the 1930s.

We have to stop this by standing firm for the original wage demand. We have to get rid of the Tories, and the only way to do this is for the rest of the working class to unite behind the miners in a General Strike against the capitalist attacks.

STRIKE

DIAIY 310 DON'T WANT OLD OWNERS IN PITS OR RAI AS A member of the National Union of Railwaymen, I would like to express my support for the miners in their struggle against the Coal Board.

I feel the NUR leadership are letting the NUM down by not instructing their members stop the movement of all coal traffic.

As a worker in another nationalized industry, - know that, although none of us would want the old owners back, 1E Y TER appointment as has as wage rats- heen a disare concerned.

Only a few railwaymen get anything like a decent wage. Signalmen at Leeds City Box are on about £30. per week, but they're the highest paid.

Railmen, porters and trackmen can be as low as £18.25. For some, the rate is £17.20 but by the 'Minimum Earnings Level' agreement it has to be brought up to £18.25—but for this a man must not refuse reasonable overtime'.

We have a wage claim in for 'reasonable increase' • It was rejected last week even before the union officials met the management. If the 7 per cent norm is imposed on the miners, it'll be coppers for us.

The whole trade union movement should come in on the NUR mesterse especially mem bers of the Loco Department— should attend their branch meetings and call for the blacking of all movements of coal during the miners' strike.

Keith Harding Leeds No. 4 Branch Whilst bureaucratic control of the pits is tolerated, the traitors at the top will strive for a reconciliation between labour and capital. We must force the leadership to fight under our direction with policies determined by us.

With this we have to expose more clearly the role of the Stalinists, who pose as the real leaders of the miners. They have infiltrated into official positions in the unior block the main influence to highway of struggle, to disarm the miners.

In my opinion, these officials will continue to retreat. When their treachery, corruption and manoeuvring fail to weaken the miners' resolve, they will welcome the intervention of the Industrial Relations Act like manna from heaven.

But I think this situation will throw up new leaders, and the old will be thrown into the dustbin of political history.

This is a common fight for common aims. If we have faith in ourselves and each other we shall triumph.

Sid Hinchcliffe Glasshaughton

9.38-12.30 Schools. 12.50-1.25 Dechrau canu. 1.30 Andy Pandy 1.45-1.53 News and weather. 2.05-2.55 Schools. 3.45-4.10 Rosla and after. 4.15 Play school. 4.40 Jackanory. 4.55 Vision on. 5.20 Motor mouse. 5.44 Sir Prancelot. 5.50 News and weather. FRED MATTHEWS, miner and father of four children from Dunscroft, near Doncas-